Picture by Tim Mossholder for Unsplash

Modern trade has a complicated secret to tell: the prevalence of supply chain slavery. Yes, as you read it. Although we might think of slavery as a thing of the past, data suggests millions of people today still work in slave-like conditions and might even be fueling the supply chains of some of the biggest companies today.

By and large, the topic has been ignored in current conversations of efficiency and connectivity but, recently, this has taken a turn. Earlier this year, the EU announced a new piece of legislation that grants member states the right to investigate supply chains they suspect are engaging in slave labor. If such an investigation were to discover that a product was, indeed, made by people living through modern slavery, it would be banned from the EU as a whole.

With this noble regulation, the EU joins a small number of countries including the US, Canada, Australia, and Mexico, with some form of regulation forbidding the use of slave labor. Now, the list might be small in number, but, together, these countries account for 47% of global GDP. So, in turn, using slavery in supply chains today could close the doors to nearly half of the global economy,

At Desteia, we understand that most companies might not be thinking about these risks actively and, in turn, could be surprised to find out the immense threats that modern slavery could pose to them—both morally and economically. So, this week, we wanted to help supply chain experts understand the potential impact of slavery in their own processes. And, to do this, we developed a free tool that will assess their current supply chains and score them based on a robust data set of modern day slavery.

But before we speak about our model, it is important to understand how slavery is still a problem to this day in some sectors—and the data we used to show this.

Let’s start with the elephant in the room: how to measure a phenomenon that is, by definition, illegal? Most countries in the world ban slavery today and, as a result, those who are enslaving other citizens are unlikely to publicly share facts and figures on the matter.

Thus, to understand slavery today, we need to rely on some form of statistical approximation. And, in this, none have as comprehensive a data set as Walk Free which ahs been trying to compile the most extensive research on modern slavery for years now.

Since there are no real estimates on the impact of slavery today, Walk Free took an ingenious approach by using representative household surveys across a sample of 75 countries. With such efforts, they are able to estimate that, in 2024, some 49.6 million people are working in slave-like conditions, where they work without receiving any form of compensation for their labor. All of which we’ve mapped below, showing the estimated number of people living in modern slavery by country:

[iframe]https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/3ByNj/1/|CustomHeight=700px[/iframe]

As with every map using absolute population values, it is useful to remember that these are not weighted by country—so, while some countries have high slave rates, they are a small share of the total working population. Namely, while China has a large number of enslaved people according to Walk Free, these account for just 0.74% of the country’s working population. Meanwhile, North Korea, with a far smaller enslaved population, also has a small total working population, bringing the total share of enslaved workers to an estimated 17%. All of which is shown in the map below:

[iframe]https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/a0t6H/1/|CustomHeight=700px[/iframe]

Now, there are a number of problems with the Walk Free data set. First and most, they take an expansive definition of slavery that accounts not just modern forms of slavery, but also forced marriage, and state-sanctioned forced labor. They do offer, however, a breakdown of region-level estimates based on the type of slavery which is most prominent. This shows that while China and India are, by far, the countries with the most modern slaves, the Arab States, as well as Europe combined with Central Asia actually experience higher rates of modern slavery.

[iframe]https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/vB881/1/|CustomHeight=700px[/iframe]

The question, then, was how could we turn this data into a useful tool for supply chain experts around the world—many of whom could be employing enslaved labor inadvertently. So, we took the data from Walk Free and combined it with existing records from the World Bank about the total size of a country’s working population. Together, this allowed us to calculate the share of a country’s population that is currently enslaved. This, in a very abstract fashion, serves as an exposure score of how likely a company is to employ slave labor. If country A, for instance, has 10% of its population working in slave-like conditions, not knowing anything about the distribution of such jobs, we could extrapolate a risk of 10% of employing slave labor in country A.

We then fed this data to a GPT model which is designed to help supply chain experts determine the potential risk of slavery in their existing supply chains. How? Our GPT will talk with you about the current structure of your supply chains. That is, understanding which countries you operate in and what share of your supply chains they represent. Then, it will perform a weighted sum of the enslaved population and work forces of these country to determine the theoretical risk an employee in your supply chain is currently a victim of slavery. All this results in a letter score assessing your risk—where anything below an A- is definitely worth examining to avoid potential trade restrictions. 

But, above all, we hope this helps supply chain experts better understand the prevalence of modern slavery and take serious actions against it. At a minimum, to go over dangerous supply chains and certifying that all providers are following global labor standards.